Day 87. Bruno Scartozzoni

Multi-disciplinary professional of planning and communication strategy.

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English:

Bruno Scartozzoni is a multi-disciplinary professional of planning and communication strategy with over 10 years of experience serving clients such as Nokia, Nestlé, Sony, AmBev and Sebrae, with passages in the Events Bank, Aktuell and Talk Interactive. He is graduated and post-graduated in Public Administration and Business Administration, in both cases by FGV. Bruno was one of the Storytellers’ founders, first Brazilian agency specialized in creating stories for brands. Today he is a partner and a planning director for Ativa Esporte, a professor of storytelling and transmedia of ESPM SP, ECA-USP and FIA, a contributor of Update or Die and an editor of the blog Caldinas.

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What is your impression about a brand called Brazil?

Tom Jobim, the famous Brazilian composer, said that “Brazil is not for beginners.” Franklin Roosevelt, former U.S. President said “where our films arrive, our products arrive.”

When I face a question like that, I’m immediately taken by the feeling that explaining the “brand Brazil” is a complex task. On the other hand, the challenge would seem a bit easier to me if it was with the “brand USA”. Perhaps the explanation lies in Roosevelt’s phrase: there are many more films about the American culture and customs than about the Brazilian ones.

It is clear that films bring a multitude of themes and narratives that have more to do with the human existence in general than with a specific society. Even so, somehow they also reflect cultures and, considering that for few a decades the cinema has been the most popular media for exchanging stories globally, there is an interesting possibility to investigate the matter.

One way to understand a brand is through narratives that are associated with it. The “brand USA”, for example, comprises elements like the cowboy, the idea of ​​a free and enterprising society, the American way of life, the constant threat of enemies and natural disasters, and so on. Even though these things often do not reflect the reality, that is what most people think of when the brand of the country comes to mind.

In the case of Brazil, the stories associated with the country are more diffuse. For good or for bad, the Brazilian society, and our storytellers, were not able to build a more cohesive and closed narrative. There are, certainly, elements very present in the popular imagination as beach, soccer, ‘mulato’ (mixture between black people and white people), samba, carnival, “malandragem” (“trickery”), and unfortunately, the well-known “jeitinho brasileiro” (the Brazilian way of finding solutions for everything) and the increasing violence. But these are static elements that, when put in motion, do not close a clear narrative arc, with a beginning, middle and end.

In fact, I dare say that the genre that better covers those elements of brazilianity is the ‘pornochanchada’ (sexploitation films produced during the 1970s and early 1980s), which even being really fun, was not recognized by major narratives, right?

The good part is that, like an unfinished Government work (another common element), there’s still time to build this brand. A brand that is young, current, and tuned with the demands of this century and without the need of a branding consultancy to modernize it and reconnect it to the public.

I write this text in July 2013, a few days after the protests that stopped Brazil in June 2013, taking about 2 million people to the streets. It is impossible to know what will happen from now on, but I can speculate that these facts are clearly linked to the maturation of this Brazilian narrative.

From now on, there is much speculation on my part, but I believe this narrative encompasses values ​​such as:

– Our creativity (a ‘way’ – “jeitinho” – redesigned for good)

– A unique power of hosting differences (of course there are exceptions and problems, but in general it’s a good legacy of the Portuguese colonizer)

– The remix of different elements, and sometimes, even opposite elements (from the religious syncretism to the “quilinho” where you can try three different cuisines in the same dish)

– A sociability that found a powerful outlet in the social media (after all, we are champions at connection time)

The result will depend on a joint effort of the society, plus a maturation time so that we can understand ourselves before showing the world something more cohesive. But anyway, I leave here two examples of how brands of places can be constructed using narratives. To use buzzwords, it is the storytelling being applied to place branding.

In the last decade we have seen Woody Allen doing several films in partnership with European cities that financed the works in order to promote themselves. “Midnight in Paris”, for example, sells a city linked to the past, the basis of its current charm. “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is, on the one hand, more brazen in showing the sights of the Catalan capital, but on the other, it also sells something more attitudinal.

The Government of Peru has chosen to tell a story of its own, creating a beautiful video similar to a short-film, part of a larger and quite consistent effort to strengthen the brand in the country in the tourism area. The end point of my answer will be the play of the video down there.